The free festival runs Oct. 14-16 at Legislative Plaza and the downtown Nashville Public Library. Books about slavery, violence against women, and Nashville during the civil rights era will be among the sessions featuring authors from Vanderbilt.

“Integrating the Divided City: Nashville during the Civil Rights Movement” will take place from noon to 1 p.m. CDT Sunday, Oct. 16, and air live on C-SPAN 2, according to festival organizers. The session in Room 31 of Legislative Plaza (301 6th Ave. N.) will feature Vanderbilt alumnus Andrew Maraniss, author of the best-selling book about Vanderbilt basketball pioneer Perry Wallace Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South. Wallace was the first African American to play basketball in the Southeastern Conference. Ansley Erickson from Columbia University will join Maraniss for the conversation.

Another highlight event at the festival will be Vanderbilt professors Volney Gay and Alice Randall discussing Gay’s new book about slavery at noon CDT Oct. 14 in Room 29 at Legislative Plaza.

Gay and Randall have both written about slavery — in Randall’s case, a reinterpretation of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, titled The Wind Done Gone, from the point of view of a slave. Gay’s new book, On the Pleasures of Owning Persons: The Hidden Face of American Slavery, attempts an understanding of the mindsets of supposedly “good” people who were also slave owners. That list includes founding fathers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

“There are hundreds of masterful books about slaves and their progeny, their history and their religion,” Gay said. “But I found few about the owners.” Raised in the North, Gay was inspired by Abraham Lincoln’s insight that many people might have acted like Civil War-era Southerners if they lived in the same circumstances.

Odie Lindsey, senior lecturer in medicine, health and society, at 10 a.m. Oct.15 in the Commons Room of the downtown Nashville Public library, will discuss “Nashville’s Literary Lights: New Voices” with Ed Tarkington. Lindsey’s story collection is We Come to Our Senses.

Jason Miller, editor at the IRIS Center at Peabody, at noon Oct. 16 in Room 29 in Legislative Plaza, will discuss his book Red Dog: A Slim in Little Egypt Mystery.

Randall, writer-in-residence, at 2:30 p.m. CDT Oct. 14 in the Nashville Public Library Banner Room, will discuss with authors Rebecca Wells and C. Michael Curtis “Enduring Legacies: The Best of Pulitzer Fiction.”

Christina Stoddard, managing editor of Journal of Risk and Uncertainty at Vanderbilt Law School, at 4:30 p.m. CDT Oct.15 in Nashville Public Library Conference Room 2, will discuss “Light in the Darkness: Three Poets” with John C. Mannone and Angie Macri.